


Snow White, Blood Red

by monimala



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Movie(s), Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:45:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i>The Avengers</i>, and what he did under Loki's command, Clint has trouble with more than just sleeping. Contains oblique references to rape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow White, Blood Red

There are times that Clint wakes up, sweat-drenched, shivering, off his game, and remembers it all differently. It’s not just a fight. Not just high kicks and crashing into the catwalk railings, smashing at each other’s skulls, choking off air. No, he sees what might have been. What could have happened if Tasha hadn’t gotten the upper hand. He zeroes in, with perfect precision, on his hands around her neck. On his knee forcing her legs apart. On her pupils dilating with more than just fear. On red in more than just her ledger.

Nausea crowds his throat. He lurches into the bathroom, splashing water on his face from the small, utilitarian, sink… until it’s like he submerged himself. But he still doesn’t come away clean. There’s blood under his nails, dirt in the furrows of his skin. He can recall, with startling clarity, every single thing he told Loki about Natasha. How he exposed her every weakness, like a raw nerve. It’s not rape she’s most afraid of but betrayal. And he betrayed her epically, in vivid shades of black and blue. Those colors have mottled to green now, with tinges of inflammation red. He sees them reflected in the mirror when she comes up behind him, the marks littering her rib cage like a child’s experiments with finger paints. 

She rests her forehead against his bare back, calling him “my hawk” in Russian and urging him, “Come back to bed.”

“Nat,” he gasps out, as she tugs him, unresisting, back into his cabin. “I… I could’ve…”

“No. You really couldn’t have.” Her fingers skate down the slope of his cheek. Her eyes are sad and a little bit condescending, targets for arrows he’ll never shoot, and her dry, chapped mouth presses practiced lies to his collarbone. “Because there are places you can’t reach, Clint. No matter how hard you try.”

He goes as deep as she’ll let him. Fucking her into the mattress, into the cocoon of sheets that were, mere moments ago, his prison, not his haven. Her thighs dig into his hips… he’s seen her use them to snap a man’s neck without a second thought… and her arms circle his shoulders, taking him to that razor’s edge between breath and oblivion. Her teeth close around his earlobe, draw blood. She pulls at his hair. She’s wet, warm and not the least bit forgiving. They go for hours. Skin to skin. Licking and biting dark, dirty places that make spots flash behind his eyelids and his cock draw up tight. Nat uses her body like a weapon, and she punishes him until he’s shaking from the exertion, like he’s run a marathon, jumped a hundred hurdles and fired every missile in his emotional arsenal. Bent above her like a bow, pulled taut like the string, until pain outweighs sorrow and regret.

There are times that Clint wakes up and remembers it all differently. Natasha reminds him of what was… and of what she’ll never truly forget.

\--end--

May 13, 2012


End file.
